Movie Review – Youngistaan

Starring Jackky Bhagnani, Farooque Sheikh and Neha Sharma in lead roles, Youngistaan is Syed Ahmed Fazal’s first directorial venture. From the trailers, it looked like an interesting take on politics. What better time to release this flick than during the current election season when everyone’s waiting for the days ahead to see who finally forms the government in Delhi. So does it work out? Let’s check.

The story of the movie goes like this –

India’s PM has been fighting cancer and is finally on the death bed despite his valiant attempt to live. His son who works in a gaming company in Japan comes to his side and is given the instructions by his dad to accept the post of PM when his party members ask. The son is stunned to say anything. The rest of the flick deals with the ups and downs of the young PM’s life.

The concept is quite refreshing and perfect for these times when the election fever is on a high. Syed has taken an interesting subject as his debut vehicle. The story starts off by giving us a background of the characters and slowly gets into the main part where the protagonist suddenly realizes that he is the Prime Minister of the largest democracy in the world.

The way his life changes whether it is his photos removed from Facebook or him roaming around with his girlfriend or him having fun with friends in a mall, all of this and more is projected quite well. The emotions which both Jackky and Neha go through in terms of their relationship, their life, their thoughts are put forward in quite an apt manner.

The problem though is the fact that there is more stress on the personal life of the PM rather than the political life. The director concentrates a lot more on love, relationships, emotions and this gets a bit irritating after a point in time. It slows down the narrative as well.

Yes, there are scheming politicians, political games being played and all of that. But you seriously wish, there was much more explored in terms of how Jackky handles the tasks and life of being a Prime Minister.

‘Suno Na Sangemarmar‘ and ‘Tanki‘ are the pick of the lot in the music department.

Jackky springs quite a surprise with his performance. He is restrained and well balanced throughout in terms of how he handles being the PM of the country quite suddenly. Though slightly cliched, his speech at the UN as well as reaching out to the poor and the climax in the end are well done. Neha Sharma does quite ok as the girlfriend. But you so wish that her character had more meat and also explained the reasons on why she wasn’t in favour of Jackky being the PM. From disagreeing to finally agreeing and even helping him in his election campaign, things happen a bit too fast.

Farooque Sheikh does well in the role he has. But you so wish that he had much more to do in his final flick than what he got here. Kayoze Irani, Boman Irani and Mita Vashisht don’t really have much to do.

All in all a decent flick if you are in for politics. But could have been way better than it finally turned out.
Rating – 2.5/5